Judgement Day
by PenguinKye
Summary: The Sorting: anticipation, electrification, wonder, worry, dread, hope, jubilation. Unless you're Draco Malfoy.


Disclaimer: All I can say is, Duh. I didn't write HP, and I don't own any of the rights to any of the stuff. So (don't) sue me.

Judgement Day.

by Kye Syr

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The Sorting Hat.

Oh, goody.

That's just what everyone anticipates, isn't it? Walking up that aisle, heart in your throat, sitting down with a wobble, hearing the marvelous old relic tell you your fate. Everyone's scared to death and weak with excitement over it. Every year, every kid, it's the same.

Except it wasn't that way for me. I had known since I was old enough to think that I was going to be a Slytherin. It's a Malfoy family tradition. A fact, not an aspiration. You are always accepted into Hogwarts, and you are always a Slytherin. That's just the way it works.

So I wasn't too excited or too worried about the Sorting. I wasn't quivering with trepidation, wondering, "What'll I be?! What'll it say?!" because I already knew. The pathetic thing is, if the system actually worked, the others would have, too. The Hat's supposed to take your strongest trait and put you in a house accordingly. Nice, smart, brave, or bad. One of four. No crossing genres.

Why, then, is everyone surprised at the outcome? What makes Neville Longbottom brave more than nice? Because he had the potential to be brave? That's tripe. We've all got the potential to be brave, or the potential to be nice, or the potential to be nasty little blighters. Deciding at random which one we most are is ridiculous and exclusive.

Before you think I'm getting on a soapbox, let me tell you that I don't actually care at all. I'm perfectly happy to hang about with other people who hate everyone and everything. I just want to point out that the whole thing is asinine.

First of all, it's too simple. People change minute to minute. Telling them what they are and stranding them there for seven years is a load of crap.

Second, and I'm talking from a happy, helpful, idealistic point of view, not my own, if you really want people to grow up, you make them mix with other kinds of people, not shove them from class to class with a bunch of thier duplicates. A genius will never see a reason to be kind to idiots if he never meets one. A simpering little sweetheart won't ever be brave if she never has to stand up for herself.

I've always wondered about us, too. I've been here four years, and I've got the vague idea that people don't like Slytherins. Maybe it's the cold stares we always get that's given me that impression. Maybe it's that everyone always claps louder when the Gryffindors win something. Maybe it's that the other three houses seem to get along together, but we've just got ourselves. I don't know. All I know is that we've been turned into a minority by a moth-eaten piece of felt.

Not that I care, but if they (i.e., Dumbledore and his lot) really gave an owl's beak about their students, wouldn't they try to help the screwed up kids (i.e., us) instead of pissing them off more? I mean, if I were them, I would think there was a reason we were all horrible, and that maybe we should be given a good word rather than a bloody star of David. It's the muggles' bloody Hitler with a wand.

And if we are really "buggered little asses" as an upperclass Gryffindor kindly informed me, why do they want us here, anyway?

But what does it matter? I, as I keep saying, don't care. They want to send us out into the world even meaner and with magic, bully for them. Maybe it's a good idea after all; sometimes spite and power are the only ways to survive the world.

Really, I doubt whether they've ever thought of it that way. Imagine the looks on their faces if they realized everything they did was detrimental to the well-being of their students (detrimental in their minds, I mean).

It has got to make you smile, once you think about it. Every time they perform the Sorting, it isn't a rite of passage, or a bestowing of some sort of gift. It's not freedom. It's not cheerworthy. It's a judgement day. They obliviously cause what they consider ruin, passing it on to a new bunch of kiddies every year.

The sorting, a big deal? Not really.

The start-of-school feast? Good food, but what's new.

Watching well-meaning basket cases form the next generation of resentful criminals?

Now that's something to look forward to.

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A.N.: That's it. That's all. It's an idea that's been floating around in my head awhile, and the only one that's made me want to write for the HP fandom. It's always sort of bothered me that her characters are pinned down like they are, so I thought someone completely characterized by the Sorting should take a poke at it. (I hope Draco wasn't too OOC.)


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